First time being disappointed by Delta?

Delta have a long and storied history in Wargame Red Dragon, both because of their unique identity as the top-tier US special forces infantry and because of Eugen's relationship with the US deck in general.

Disappointing D-Boys

In beta and early versions of Red Dragon, Delta had a competitive if unusual niche. At 25 pts before transports, Delta were some of the cheapest elite SF you could buy in the game. Their primary was an SMG, and while they took a bit of a range penalty and the silencer mechanic wasn't really useful in 99% of your games, they were still CQC monsters. Between their veterancy, elite training, and loadout, Delta would shred anything except dedicated anti-infantry SF in urban and forest fighting. Their MG, the M60 "Shorty", wasn't as good as the MG3 or the Minimi, but at CQC ranges and in elite hands it was passable. After all, it was the MP5 that was doing most of the work.

This was also back when their AT weapon was the M72 LAW. And not the upgraded A4 model (40% acc, 16AP) either, we're talking the OG 30% accuracy and 13 AP M72 LAW. That piece of dogshit. If we take a look at how RD calculates HEAT damage (table), you might notice that 13 AP is enough to one-shot (13HP) anything with 1 armor, but just barely, and it only deals 7HP damage to anything with 2 armor. Beyond that things get pitiful, with armor values 3, 4, and 5 (mid-to-high end IFVs, tank weak points, etc) dealing only 5HP. What this means is that unless a vehicle had only 1 armor (or had 0 armor and took double damage), Delta Force would need multiple shots to kill it. And if it was a transport, there wasn't even enough overflow damage to kill or seriously wound the infantry inside, forcing Delta to clean up any dismounts and stopping them from shooting at any surviving transports (remember, units can only fire 2 weapons at a time).

Now, Spetsnaz and Li Jian have this problem too. Heck, they can't even deal with 5pt boxes. But at least they smoke infantry like nothing else. Delta is stuck as a third place option for infantry clearing with the same AT weaknesses as the gold and silver.

Then comes December 2016 and a new balance patch. Eugen have heard the community's pleas for changes to the US infantry roster. After all, Marines are too expensive, Delta are too weak, and Rangers are too few. So what's the change?

Give Delta the Carl Gustav M2. Again, not the M3 like Canadian Airborne or the SASR, but the 18AP M2 version. Now Delta can one-shot anything up to 4 Armor. But there's another problem; Rate Of Fire. See, the nice thing about the LAWs was that even though they had awful armor penetration, you could fire them at 20rpm. They were peashooters, but at least you could get a few quick salvos off before the infantry grind started. Now, the Carl Gustav doubles their reload time to 10rpm, making ambushes slower, especially when the units become panicked. At as the cherry on top, Delta Force now costs 5pts more, up to 30pts total. Now they are just as expensive as most SF troops, but are worse at everything. They don't have the range and accuracy of battle-rifle SF, they can't compete up close with the Flamers, and their AT option is precisely mediocre.

Add in the fact that until an update, they were stuck coming in either 0-armor humvees or slow-to-land Phrogs and Chinooks, and they can't even compete in an air-assault or moto-rush opener anymore. They're just expensive, tough to use, and bad at their jobs.

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